The Bird Boys Read online

  Praise for

  The Do-Right

  The first

  Delpha Wade and Tom Phelan Mystery

  WINNER

  The Dashiell Hammett Prize, 2015

  The Shamus Award, 2016

  BEST OF LISTS

  Kirkus Reviews Best Books 2015

  Kirkus Reviews Best Mysteries and Thrillers 2015

  Kirkus Reviews Best Debut

  REVIEWS

  This book is flat out excellent…I heartily recommend it.

  —Sheryl Cotleur, Copperfield’s Books

  Delpha Wade is conscientiously following her parole officer’s rules for finding a place to live and a job: act as polite as possible and ask for what she needs.…Sandlin blends pathos, humor, and poetic prose in a strong debut.

  —Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW

  Sandlin’s clipped prose style is pleasingly eccentric, and can become downright Chandleresque (“The nose had a curve a school bus’d run off of.”)

  —Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

  When a critic praises a writer’s original voice, what does that really mean? In the case of Texas native Lisa Sandlin, it means dog-earing page after page in her novel The Do-Right to reread particularly terrific passages or, even better, share them aloud…

  —Dallas Morning News

  Sandlin makes fantastic use of familiar, archetypal characters—the neophyte sleuth, the woman with the troubled past, etcetera, etcetera—and brings new life into them by crafting narrative that, past the surface of an exciting detective story, seems to search for a sense of grace or forgiveness…This novel has it all—murder, mystery, abuse, corporate espionage. Take your pick. The prose reads like movie stills from an old detective flick. —Killer Nashville

  THE BIRD BOYS

  A DELPHA WADE AND TOM PHELAN MYSTERY

  THE BIRD BOYS

  A DELPHA WADE AND TOM PHELAN MYSTERY

  LISA SANDLIN

  The Bird Boys: A Delpha Wade and Tom Phelan Mystery. Copyright © 2019 by Lisa Sandlin. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations for reviews. For information, write Cinco Puntos Press, 701 Texas, El Paso, TX 79901 or call us at (915) 838-1625.

  FIRST EDITION

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Sandlin, Lisa, author.

  Title: The bird boys : a Delpha Wade and Tom Phelan mystery / Lisa Sandlin.

  Description: First edition. | El Paso, Texas : Cinco Puntos Press, [2019] Identifiers: LCCN 2018049003 | ISBN 978-1-947627-13-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-947627-14-7 (e-book)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3569.A5168 B57 2019 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018049003

  The cover photo is called “Nevermore,” and was taken by the amazing photographer KEITH CARTER in 1985 and used with his permission.

  Like Lisa Sandlin, Keith is a native of Beaumont, Texas.

  Book and cover design by ANNE M. GIANGIULIO

  Cooking with Crisco!

  Dedicated to librarians everywhere

  Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

  JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  CHAPTER XXX

  CHAPTER XXXI

  CHAPTER XXXII

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  CHAPTER XXXV

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  CHAPTER XL

  CHAPTER XLI

  CHAPTER XLII

  CHAPTER XLIII

  CHAPTER XLIV

  CHAPTER XLV

  CHAPTER XLVI

  NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I

  SOON AS THE office was cleared for business, Phelan trashed the yellow crime tape and hired industrial cleaning guys to blast the blood from the wood floor, patch up the stain. He’d paid them extra to work on the weekend. Still smelled funky though. Bleachy—and underneath, a whiff of something live, gone over. He pushed up the windows and let Beaumont’s August heat K.O. his stuttering AC unit.

  The radio hijacked his attention: the Senate had, for once, done a day’s work, slapping Kissinger and Nixon away from Cambodia. Mitts off the bomb money, boys. The news segued into War’s song Why Can’t We Be Friends? Was KJET’s DJ feeling cynical? Wistful? Both?

  Phelan, dressed in ragged jeans and an undershirt, squatted down and pried up the paint can’s lid with a screwdriver. He popped it open to a round of Apollo White, a creamy ivory. Poured some into a tray and let the fuzzy roller drink it up.

  One swipe across his slug-green office wall and he stepped back, mouth drifting open. Look at that. Like a wash of spotlight.

  The office must have been shabby all along. Dingy. Had Miss Wade noticed that? Boy, he hadn’t. To Phelan, this two-room office suite, home of his new business, had appeared vacated by angels.

  He dipped into the paint tray again, more white swathes, wasn’t sure he liked it. Kind of glaring. But the least he could do was make the place look different from the office where Deeterman had tried to kill her.

  The phone rang. He rubbed his right hand with a rag, tossed back the drop cloth from the metal desk—and Aw, man still hand-printed its black receiver white when he clutched it.

  “Phelan Investigations.”

  “Would I be speakin’ to Mr. Phelan himself?”

  An older voice, deep, slow, borderline courtly.

  You be, Phelan thought and replied, “Yes, sir. What can I do for you?” He was facing the wall most needing paint: the one behind his desk, with the spray and the spots and the rusty line bleeding down.

  “My name is Xavier Bell. I b’lieve I spoke with your secretary, Miss Delpha Wade. She informed me about your fees. I would like a personal consultation next month. I thought it best to book an appointment well in advance.”

  “That’s wise, sir, considering our schedule. Tell me when you’d like to come in, and I’ll check the book.” Which meant: look straight down onto the blank desk calendar.

  “Allow me to deliberate a minute, Mr. Phelan.”

  “Sure thing.” There was some muffled exchange, like Mr. Bell had a deliberation partner. Man could deliberate with the U.N., as far as Phelan was concerned.

  He was already waving in the delivery of a new-used couch for the secretary’s office. Phelan had bought two fattish pillow-chairs that, shoved together, made a short couch. Pretty aquamarine color, like water before ships got in it. He’d got a deal because the couch was originally what L&B Pre-Owned Furniture described as a “sectional,” a bunch of pieces that stuck together, and Lester, the furniture-entrepreneur, was missing an end piece. Wanted to rest your elbow on a nice solid couch arm, you were out of luck.

  Lester waited b
y the door as two L&B employees seized the old plaid sofa and began hauling it off. As it passed, he pointed at the plaid and pinched his nose. Phelan, muting the receiver, blew him a raspberry. Lester himself rolled in a gently used client chair, lined it up with the pillow chairs. He raised his eyebrows and escorted out the blood-stained leather one that hydrogen peroxide and leather-cleaner had failed to rehabilitate. Stuck his head back in the door, rubbed thumb and forefinger together. Phelan flexed his fingers: five, he’d be over to pay around then. Lester hoisted his thumb and thumped down the stairs.

  Mr. Bell cleared a phlegmy throat. He had decided on Friday, September 7 at ten o’clock in the morning, if that was good.

  “Good,” Phelan said. “Would you be the gentleman who was concerned about…being located?” Miss Wade had reported they’d had a caller who wanted to be invisible. To someone.

  “I want you to find my brother, Mr. Phelan. I suppose you’d say that he is the one…concerned about being located.” As for more details, Mr. Bell would prefer to wait until they could speak confidentially.

  All righty. Appointment recorded on the 7 square in September. Phelan hung up the phone, picked up the roller soaked in Apollo White and vanished smudges and patches of spackle. His spirits were rising from around his ankles where they’d been puddled.

  He finished painting the wall with the window that faced the New Rosemont Hotel, running the roller up to the cut-in portions. My god, this place was looking different already. He moved on to the wall with the connecting door in it. That one went quick. He set up the paint tray behind his desk, near the wall screaming for coverage—a starburst spray of reddish brown drops and drips like a frozen firework—squatted and bounced to loosen up, rolled his shoulders. The phone trilled.

  Again? He made a fist, raised it straight up. Phelan Investigations was booking work. He picked up the receiver with a rag and answered cordially.

  His face hardened as he listened. “Yeah, I’m Tom Phelan. ‘Scuse me, say again—who are you? OK, OK, Doctor, got it. Now, they took her where?”

  Phelan slammed down the receiver, forced the rotary dial around as fast as his index finger could shove it. He blasted his way past the law office secretary on the other end by barking the word URGENT! When Miles Blankenship Esq., attorney at law, took the line, Phelan rattled out what he wanted: he had a friend in police custody who not only needed counsel, she must NOT set foot in a cell.

  He laid out the situation: had Miles read the Enterprise’s headlines about those murdered kids? The man who’d murdered them had been killed down on Orleans Street—Miles read that? OK. Well, it was Phelan’s office he’d been killed in—and Phelan’s secretary who’d taken him out. Pure self-defense. The man attacked her, stabbed her. But there was some crucial history Miles had to know. She was on parole after fourteen years in Gatesville. The charge back then had been voluntary manslaughter: she’d killed a man who had been raping her.

  “So this is the second guy—”

  “Only been out five months. Don’t want her going back in a cell.”

  “You’re clear on that point, Tom. Tell me, was she also armed?”

  “No. Unarmed. Broke a liquor bottle. Used that.”

  Phelan overrode all objections. Didn’t give a flying fuck if Miles Blankenship’s field was divorce. Miles had passed the Texas bar, he was the single lawyer Phelan knew, and Miles had to hit it, please, for the police station now—in Watergate terms, at this point in time. Phelan would see him there.

  Down at the curb, he unlocked his trunk, grabbed out the spare shirt and pants he kept in his P.I. kit. Stripped and dressed on Orleans Street, ignoring a wolf whistle from two guys in a Chevy C-10.

  He double-timed the concrete steps.

  His route: shoot past the Formica front desk and its likely guard, venerable Sergeant Fontenot with the wire-brush eyebrows. Swerve left into the squad room past bulletin boards tacked with mimeographs, past the cops shooting the breeze in school desks, others jabbing typewriters, a thief or two in the folding chairs. Jog straight to the back past a holding cell and bust into E.E.’s office, where he would persuade his uncle, the chief of police, to take Delpha Wade’s statement without first arresting her, printing her, locking her in a cell.

  This fantasy was forbidden by station policy. Also by the Policemen’s Etiquette Guide and the Nephew’s Codebook. Moves like the one Phelan was entertaining were why the Suck-It-Up manual existed. Nevertheless, he nodded to the desk sergeant and kept on walking.

  “Whoa dere! Where you passin’ yourself by to, Tom Phelan?”

  Couple of uniforms off to the side gabbing. He stared them down and leaned over the scarred Formica to the sergeant. Instead of saying he was here because he’d been the first on the scene—his own office—or that he was Delpha Wade’s employer, which around the station was generally known, Phelan muttered, “You told me they wouldn’t charge her.”

  Two riotous gray thatches thrust down over Sergeant Fontenot’s small, blue, troubled eyes. He had said that very thing, and now, appearing irritated by his own turmoil, he stalled. “Who you talking ‘bout?”

  Phelan’s lips pulled to one side. “Delpha Wade. Doctor just called me, said police are down at the hospital hustling her in.”

  “Hustlin’? Naw, naw, Abels and Tucker, they left here like a herd of turtles. We just bringing her in aks her some questions.”

  “Lemme ask you one, Sergeant Fontenot. How many boys you dug up down at Deeterman’s house? What’s the tally?”

  Now the uniforms angled toward Phelan.

  “Six. So far. They off lookin’ in some other places now.”

  “After he did what he did to those kids, you tell me offing that guy wasn’t a bona fide public service.”

  “Fucking A,” put in one of the uniforms, a white kid with scrappy hair and a large red ear angled toward the front desk.

  “Shut up, Wilson,” Fontenot said wearily. He lowered his chin and challenged Phelan. “Ain’t nobody don’ know that.”

  “Then why y’all bringing her in?”

  “Cause your uncle, he say so. He’s the chief of police, you don’ notice. You don’ tole him what to do. Pardon your ass, cher, you a private bird dog hadn’t did six months’ worth a business yet.”

  “Got me there, Sergeant. But…allow me to remind you what you said to me after my secretary had to fight for her life. You said, ‘Nobody’s touching that girl.’”

  “Not makin’ an argue wit you. But ’low me to mind you that anybody get dead, we got forms to fill out. Set your behind in a chair, you.”

  Fontenot waited until Phelan’s back was turned then grumbled into the intercom. To E.E., Phelan knew, because the old snitch was grumbling in French.

  Edouard Etienne Guidry, hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana; appearance: short, dark, and handsome; sartorial taste: radiant, was married to Phelan’s aunt Maryann, his mother’s younger sister. He was a man Phelan took stock in, and there weren’t so many of those.

  Chief Guidry rounded the corner and strode past the desk area, raking thick fingers through his silvered hair. Shirtsleeves, the knot in a kaleidoscope tie wrenched half-way down his broad chest. He rolled his eyes when Phelan started to rise and made a mashing motion at his nephew. Phelan sat back down.

  E.E. stood there, hands on his hips, two pinkie sparklers and a wide gold band. “Tete dure, you. Who warn you about hirin’ a ex-con?”

  Phelan’s hard head lowered. “She served it. As you know—went in in ’59 and got out in this year of our Lord 1973. She started over. Going back to jail, that’s the worst thing that could happen to her.”

  E.E. continued to glare.

  “All right, OK, I’m an asshole messing in police business. You got my sincere apology. But I gotta be here.”

  “Mais, there it is. This about you.”

  “Some is, OK? She was just sitting in my office, putting letters in envelopes, and I shoulda been there, shoulda taken that knife. But most of it’s about her. About w
hat’s right. And that is—it was the clearest self-defense there is.”

  “That girl’s been around law enforcement almost as many years as your right hand’s been around your dick. She knows the drill.”

  “Doesn’t mean she can’t use a body on her side.”

  His uncle’s eyes slitted. “This here the body you talkin’ ‘bout?”

  Phelan turned to see attorney Miles Blankenship entering the double doors, slipping off his aviators to display a neutral expression. At least, Phelan was pretty sure that was who that was. He’d spoken to him on the phone, but hadn’t actually laid eyes on Miles in ten years, and the last time he had, Miles was wearing a long black robe and a mortarboard hat. The elegant man walking through the door wore wide-lapelled navy pinstripe, nipped at the waist, modest bell to the creased trousers. His black calfskin briefcase might have been rubbed with twenties to give it the mellow sheen.

  “You know, Tom,” E.E. was squinting toward Miles, “I seen you be lost, be steady, be stupid in the head and a brave little son of a bitch. This the first time you ak like Judas Iscariot.”

  “C’mon, E.E. No disrespect. That’s a friend from high school, and he was what I thought of to help Delpha out.”

  “You payin’ his fee?”

  Phelan nodded.

  “Cause you overflowin’ with cash. The private eye business that hot. You a man of means.”

  He let E.E.’s words curl, topple, and break against his forehead. He held his peace as his old friend from high school joined the conversation.

  “Miles Blankenship, Chief. Firm of Griffin and Kretchmer. Honor to meet you. I’ll be representing—”

  “I got it.” E.E. shook Miles’ hand, dropping it when the door opened again.

  Detective Fred Abels, ‘burns and ‘stache and houndstooth jacket, had hold of her elbow. Must be Detective Tucker bringing up the rear, a husky pug-nose in a park-bench green leisure suit with his collar fashionably wide-spread. Phelan felt a flash of gratitude toward E.E. for the lack of cuffs on her, flash of Blessed Jesus when he examined a pale Delpha Wade braced between the two detectives. A glance around—at E.E., Fontenot, Miles—assured Phelan she had gripped the general attention.